Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) cited former President Trump's recent calls for a new election and his claims that, if re-elected, he would issue pardons to participants in the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot while discussing the "hallmarks of a fascist political party" on CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
Driving the news: In a Truth Social post last week, Trump repeated baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election and called for the "rightful winner" to be declared or have the election declared "irreparably compromised and have a new Election, immediately!"
- Days later, Trump appeared on the conservative Wendy Bell Radio show and said that if re-elected he would "look very, very favorably about full pardons" for Jan. 6 rioters.
In a prime-time address Thursday night, President Biden condemned Trump and "MAGA forces," saying they "represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic."
- Trump and his supporters are determined to "take this country backward. Backward to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love," Biden said.
What they're saying: "If he's saying that the elections should be re-run, which is something he's been asserting from the beginning, that's outside of the Constitution," Raskin said, referring to Trump.
- "There's no procedure for the military to just seize the election machinery and run a new election," he added.
- "And, look, more than 60 courts rejected every claim of electoral fraud and corruption, which Donald Trump advanced."
"Two of the hallmarks of a fascist political party are, one, they don't accept the results of elections that don't go their way. And two, they embrace political violence," Raskin said.
- "That's why Joe Biden was right to sound the alarm this week about these continuing attacks on our constitutional order from the outside by Donald Trump and his movement."
Go deeper: Biden ramps up anti-Republican rhetoric ahead of midterms
